In such personal simplicity and self-denial the sovereign pontiff himself gives the example in the Vatican. The palace is large--very large; but the libraries, the archives, the various museums, and the galleries and halls of paintings, of statuary, and of art, occupy no small portion of it. Other portions of it are devoted to the vast workshops of the unrivalled Roman mosaics, others still to the mint. The offices of the secretary of state, and the bureaus of other departments are there. The Sixtine, and Pauline, and other chapels are found in it; and the various officers and attendants of the court have many of them their special apartments. The pontiff has his suite of rooms, as well those of state as those that are private. You enter a large, well-proportioned hall, rich with gilding and arabesque and fresco paintings. A company of soldiers might manœuvre on its marble floor. It is large enough to receive the fullest suite of a sovereign who would visit the pope. Just now, eight or ten soldiers in a rich military uniform are lounging here, as it were, for form's sake. In the next room--a smaller and less ornamented one, yet in something of the same style, and with a few benches for furniture--a servant will take your hat and cloak. In a third room, you find some ecclesiastical attendants. You pass through a fourth room of considerable size. It is now empty. At times a consistory or meeting of the cardinals for business is held here; at other times, an ascetic Capuchin father, with his tonsured head, his long beard, his coarse brown woollen cassock fastened around the waist by a cord, and with sandalled feet, preaches to the cardinals and bishops and officials of the court, and to the pope himself. With the freedom and bravery of a man who, to follow Christ, has given up the world, and hopes for nothing from man, and fears nothing save to fail in his duty, he reminds those whom men honor of their duties and obligations, and in plain, ofttimes unvarnished language, will not shrink from speaking the sternest, strongest home truths of religion. You pass through the silent hall in reverence. A fourth hall, with a better carpeting, (for it is winter,) and tolerably warmed, is the ante-chamber proper, where those are waiting who are to be admitted to an audience of the pope. In another smaller room, opening from this one, those are waiting whose turn it will be to enter next; or perhaps a group is assembled, if the pope will come out hither to receive them, as he sometimes does, when the audience is simply one not of business, but simply for the honor of being presented to him and of receiving his blessing. All these which we have enumerated are the state or ceremonial apartments. From the last one, you pass to the private office or sitting-room of the sovereign pontiff. It is a plain room, about fifteen feet by twenty, not lofty, lighted by a single window, and without a fire-place. Two or three devotional